_THE REALISTIC NOVELISTS--DICKENS, THACKERAY, BALZAC._
The pendulum of human interest swings quickly from one side to the
other. Within five years of the appearance of the last of the Waverley
novels there appeared in England a novelist as great as Scott and in
every way his direct antithesis. Scott was a splendid story-teller.
With a swift brush he painted large scenes and large characters. His
brilliant pageantry moved easily and steadily from the beginning to the
end of more than thirty novels, most of which were published in three
stately volumes. In 1835 came Dickens, with his disconnected sketches
of ordinary types of Englishmen. His first great success, Pickwick, was
written from week to week as it was published. The author never knew
three chapters ahead what would happen to his characters; nor did it
matter. He had his characters, he had Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller and
the rest; what mattered anything else? As the story went on something
would happen to them, and that was enough.
And with Dickens we have an entirely different style of writing.
The Waverley novels are written with more or less fine language,
large words, sweeping phrases; Pickwick was a great bubbling mass
of sentiment and emotion, pathos, humour, the cold feeling, the hot
feeling, the shaky feeling, the melancholy feeling, the riotous
feeling--one might go on forever. With every turn of his pen this new
magician plays upon our heart-strings, possesses us, fills us, makes
us laugh or cry at will. The very collocation of his words causes our
flesh to quiver and the blood to leap in our veins, and holds our
attention spell-bound. What Jane Austen did in her fine way, to the
despair of Scott, Dickens did in his big, coarse, splashing way, and
with ten times the genius.
Dickens’s father was a poor man in the navy-pay office, at first with
a yearly salary of £80. Micawber in David Copperfield was drawn from
him. Even when he got as much as £350 a year he was always in debt, and
finally landed in the Marshalsea, which Dickens so vividly describes in
Little Dorrit.
While still a child, Charles was sent to work in a blacking
warehouse, described as the establishment of Murdstone & Grinby in
David Copperfield. He had a terribly hard life of it. But after a
while he was taken away and sent to school for a short time, finally
studying shorthand and becoming a newspaper reporter of the debates in
Parliament at a time when these were taken down verbatim.
By the time he was twenty-four he was getting about thirty-five dollars
a week. He tried a few sketches in a magazine (Sketches by Boz) which
were successful in their way, and finally was asked by Chapman & Hall
to write the text for some sporting pictures by a noted artist of the
day. This turned out to be Pickwick, became instantly popular, and
Dickens was a famous novelist before he was twenty-five. He wrote
about twenty novels, and earned as much money as Scott (a million
dollars), though many more copies of his novels have been published. He
may be considered the most popular English novelist that ever wrote.
Pickwick, Dickens’s first novel, is undoubtedly also his most humorous.
It tells of the doings of a farcical club headed by Mr. Pickwick. But
Pickwick’s servant, Sam Weller, is the most amusing character in it,
and as a character probably the most famous in all Dickens’s works.
Next to Pickwick in popularity, and by many liked much better, is David
Copperfield. This is nothing less than a pathetic and intensely human
autobiography of Dickens himself, with certain fictitious additions.
David Copperfield is Charles Dickens (notice the reversed initials),
Micawber is Dickens’s own father, and Dora was Dickens’s first love.
Only a passionately sympathetic heart could have conceived this story,
and only a man with an overflowing genius for work could have written
it in the spontaneous and natural way that Dickens did.
Third in the list of popularity is probably The Old Curiosity Shop, in
which appears Little Nell, the description of whose pathetic death is
found in every school reader. This volume also tells the story of Mr.
Quilp, the dwarf, the Marchioness, and Dick Swiveller. Oliver Twist was
written partly as an attack on workhouses in Dickens’s day. It tells
us the story of a poor waif, and takes us among thieves, introducing
us to the famous Fagin, Bill Sikes and Nancy. Little Dorrit is the
story of the Marshalsea, the great debtors’ prison in which Dickens’s
own father at one time resided. Dombey & Son tells the pathetic story
of little Paul Dombey, the boy mate to Little Nell; Martin Chuzzlewit
introduces us to the inimitable Pecksniff and family. Barnaby Rudge is
a sort of detective story, telling of a murder and how it was found
out. Bleak House and Nicholas Nickleby are also considered to be among
the best of Dickens’s novels.
By many his greatest is thought to be A Tale of Two Cities, an
intensely dramatic historical novel of the French Revolution. It is
entirely different from anything else Dickens ever wrote, yet the
pathetic and sympathetic character-drawing makes it entirely unlike the
historical novels of Scott or Dumas.
His short Christmas stories are also among his best work, especially
A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, and The Cricket on the Hearth. Either
may be read in an hour or two. W. E. Henley considers Barbox Bros., a
beautiful and simple story of a lame girl, a little child, and a man
running away from his birthday, even better; but it is not found in
most complete editions and only recently has been published in separate
form.
When the name of Dickens is mentioned that of Thackeray is also always
on the tongue, yet there are large numbers even of the most refined
people who do not find Thackeray as good reading as Dickens. It takes
a quiet person, with a sense for the intellectual, the sarcastic and
the ironical as opposed to the sentimental and humorous, a person
with gentlemanly or ladylike instincts, to fall quite into sympathy
with Thackeray. But those who love him, love him with an intensity
surpassing their feeling for any other author. Thackeray penetrates
life with his keen shafts. He is strong because of his reserves,
Dickens because of his lack of reserve. Thackeray has polish and
elegance of style, he is a master of the best English, and handles it
with the ease and grace of inborn, hereditary skill. He could not have
made such personal confessions as David Copperfield or Little Dorrit,
he could not have laid the colour on with the indiscriminate profusion
of Pickwick or the scenes describing Little Nell. He was in no sense
a great emotional artist, for only now and then does he lose himself.
Such passages as the death of Colonel Newcome are few in Thackeray.
He is more often ridiculing foibles than gaining our sympathy for
admirable sinners. He bites and stings; and unless we have a fine heart
to perceive it we never become aware that he is winning too, that under
his cynical perception of the truth of things in this world, especially
in the aristocratic society which alone he knew and of which alone he
wrote, he has a great and loving heart, a heart tender and forgiving,
sympathetic even when he ridicules most unmercifully. It is this great
loving heart, so hidden that it can be seen only by those who are truly
his friends, that makes Thackeray, the belated exponent of a class in
itself repulsive to the average democrat of to-day, in some respects
the greatest writer of fiction in the English language. He has grave
faults: he is always preaching; he is seldom very hopeful; he had no
great belief in himself or his mission in the world. But language in
his hands is almost a living and breathing entity, a polished, perfect
instrument. And Thackeray teaches the great lessons of restraint,
of patience and thoughtful study of life, of the little, nameless
compensations which after all to most of us alone make life really
worth living.
Thackeray was born and brought up as an English gentleman. His parents
were married and lived in India, belonging to the great British civil
service there. But his father died when he was young, and his mother
married again and took him to England. He had his small fortune, and
little thought of worrying about money till in middle life he found
his substance gone through injudicious speculation, and his pen the
principal means by which he could earn a living. He married and had
several daughters, but his wife became insane. This was the only cloud
on his domestic life.
Thackeray’s early books are not remarkable. Samuel Titmarsh and even
Barry Lyndon are not and never have been popular. It was not until
1848, a dozen years after Dickens (a year the younger man) had become
famous with Pickwick, that Thackeray really took his place among the
great English novelists on the publication of Vanity Fair. Thackeray’s
novels never attained the sale that Dickens’s did, and never yielded
anything like as much money.
The sub-title of Vanity Fair was “A Novel Without a Hero.” The heroine,
Becky Sharpe, however, was hero and heroine in one. It is said
that Thackeray’s women are weak; but no finer portrayal of feminine
character is to be found in modern literature than that of Becky Sharpe
in Vanity Fair.
The Newcomes is considered a greater novel by some. It presents much
more lovable characters. Colonel Newcome being one of the most lovable
in fiction; and Clive Newcome, and Ethel Newcome whom he loves, are of
the same stuff as the well bred, educated people we see about us and
number as our friends and most cherished companions.
Pendennis is in the same vein as The Newcomes, and involves some of the
same characters, but it is not so strong a novel by any means, though
perhaps more sentimental.
Henry Esmond is an historical novel, and may perhaps be considered the
highest type of historical novel ever written. It never has had the
popularity of Scott’s, but its characters are undoubtedly much stronger
and more carefully drawn than any of his. Lady Castlewood and Beatrix
are as real as if they had lived in the flesh, and yet as interesting
as any a romancer ever imagined.
His fifth great novel is The Virginians, a sort of sequel to Esmond.
Only five novels! but they are of a kind to do for Thackeray what
Les Miserables did for Victor Hugo as compared with the popular and
productive Dumas. Thackeray and Hugo are both most admired, and rank
highest in the literary firmament, in spite of the perennial popularity
of Dickens and Dumas.
We have now considered the great romantic artists, who cared for point
of view, Gothic castles, and the events of history; and likewise the
great domestic story tellers, who, like Dickens, have sacrificed plot
and scene to character portrayal.
We have reserved until the present a novelist of France who may
ultimately be counted the greatest master of modern fiction. He was a
contemporary of Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, but he took no part in
the romantic movement. Indeed, the critics of his own day would have
nothing to do with him. His works, far more numerous than Scott’s and
almost as bulky, sold in sufficient numbers to enable him to pay the
debts his lack of business experience caused him to contract in various
speculations; but even his own fellow citizens of Tours snubbed him so
unmercifully that in sorrow he decided not to give to that town his
large and valuable library, as he had intended to do. Only recently
have his books been adequately translated into English, and now only a
portion are accessible. He is the last great classic to come upon the
stage; and the most thoughtful young writers of to-day whisper among
themselves that the Master is Balzac.
Victor Hugo, Dumas, George Sand, the representatives of the romantic
movement, are fascinating story-tellers, but they are not true to human
nature. Their works abound in glaring faults in the grammar of human
life. They were so wrapped up in the thrills their tales were to excite
that they had small time to think seriously about the minuter facts.
They have never analysed the principles of life. What observation
chanced to bring them they used in the most effective way; and as we
read Les Miserables and Consuelo we are shocked at every point by the
inconsistency of the characters, the false ring of the speeches they
make and the acts they perform. The colour has been laid on thick and
hot, and flames with overpowering brilliancy; but the drawing will not
bear close inspection.
In Scott we find no such inaccuracies of characterization, however
many faults of grammar there may be. The Englishman is a master at
characterization, and in no great English novelists do we find the
inaccuracies of thought and feeling which characterized the French
romancers. But in all Scott’s pageantry, with his hundreds of figures,
we find but relatively few types, and even they are not very profound
or wonderful. They are the common, everyday men Scott knew, dressed up
in the clothes of history and romance. And though they are all true
enough as far as they go, the same type appears again and again with
a different feather in his cap and a fresh name to be hailed by. And
Dickens and Thackeray have drawn but a few types, those they themselves
had come personally in contact with and known by habit and instinct.
These they have immortalized, and repeated often enough for us to
understand them in all their phases. The types in their books are drawn
unconsciously. They were no deep students of the varieties of human
nature, nor of the underlying principles of life. Their time and effort
were devoted to the art of representation, in which, each in his own
peculiar line, they excelled all other men.
But Balzac essayed to write the whole Comedy of Humanity (he called
his books the Comedie Humaine). He takes his characters one after the
other, beginning with Parisian life, and then taking up the life of
the provinces, political life, military life, and in each presenting a
series of characters that accurately represent the historical types of
his own age in France. He is a Frenchman, his characters and his ideals
are French, and he omits the innocent lovely rose of English purity:
he writes no idylls. But a person with broad mind and catholic tastes
cannot help feeling the masterly touch.
His personal history is that of a worker. Before he was thirty he had
published a dozen novels to which he did not attach his name. They were
for practice. Then he came out with The Chouans, which attracted some
attention. In the next few years he wrote and gave to the world some
ninety compositions long and short, mostly full-fledged books.
His friends had told him he had no talent, and his native town never
honoured him; but by industry alone he overcame all difficulties, and
by sheer force of character took his place among the great novelists
of his age. Most of the money he earned was devoted to paying off his
debts; and when that was accomplished and he had married the lady he
loved, he died.
Not all of Balzac’s novels will be liked by the English reader, and
they differ immensely in subject, character, and interest.
The most popular of his stories, perhaps, because it treats of the
rotten though dramatic life of Paris, is Père Goriot, the story of
a simple old man whose daughters become fashionable, and to whose
passions he is made to minister, while his own comforts in life are
heartlessly sacrificed.
Rivaling Père Goriot as Balzac’s masterpiece is Eugenie Grandet, a
story of country life utterly devoid of the excitement with which the
Parisian story abounds. Eugenie is the daughter of a rich miser, who
deprives her and her mother almost of the necessities of life. She
meets and learns to love her cousin, Charles Grandet. He goes to the
West Indies where he begins to build his fortunes with the savings
Eugenie has given him. But the girl’s mother dies, and then her father,
and she is left a rich heiress. Not knowing this, Charles writes asking
her to release him that he may marry an heiress. Eugenie never thinks
of her own sacrifice, but gives him his liberty, and even secretly pays
his father’s debts lest they hamper him in his career. She ends her
life in works of philanthropy.
It is a simple story, but told with the hard exactness of fate and
truth, and it is this profound truth that makes it appeal to us so
powerfully.
Many are very fond of The Country Doctor. The first half of the book
tells the simple life and good works of this remarkable man; but the
intense interest of the story is in the recital of the romantic early
life of this strange man--his own story of himself which fills the
second half of the book.
Cousin Pons tells the story of a collector of curios, for whose
property various relatives are intriguing. Cousine Bette teaches us
the lengths to which a Parisian middle-class family will go to get
the money to maintain their respectability, and the catastrophes
which are likely to follow when character is rotten at the bottom.
Madame de Langeais is one of the shorter and more exciting stories of
Parisian love. César Birroteau portrays the typical life of a Parisian
lawyer, and The House of Nucingen that of a Parisian banker, while in
The Illustrious Gaudissart we have the French drummer or travelling
salesman.
In still another series of novels, much less generally read, Balzac
goes into philosophy and even the mysticism of Swedenborg. The most
philosophic of these novels is Louis Lambert, the most mystical and
Swedenborgian is Seraphita, the story of an angel, so to speak. The
Magic Skin is symbolistic, and The Search for the Absolute gives us
most realistically the mystic and self-sacrificing life of an inventor.
Zola has attempted to do for his time what Balzac did for his, and in
stories of the Rougon-Macquart family tells us the life histories of
as varied a series of characters. The thing that made Balzac great,
however, is his profound knowledge of human nature and the laws of
human life, while Zola is bent on telling the thrilling stories he has
found in different classes of society which, as a journalist, he has
investigated.
Balzac and Zola handle contemporary life in much the same spirit that
the romantic novelists handle the life of a past age; but Balzac
is also a realistic student of character, and the interest in his
characters predominates over the interest in his subjects and scenes.
He is as much a master of description, however, as Scott or Victor
Hugo. But much of Balzac’s and Zola’s realism is distasteful to the
English or American reader. To be appreciated they must be read
intellectually and not emotionally.
Among the great realists, or novelists of character and domestic life,
we must include the women who have written fiction. Of these the
greatest is George Eliot, whose novels rank below those of Dickens and
Thackeray only because they are lacking in humour and fun. They are
very serious, but they give us women as they really are in heart and
soul and emotion. The best of George Eliot’s novels is Middlemarch, the
story of an English country village and especially of an interesting
educated young woman, Dorothea Casaubon. But there are other and almost
equally interesting quiet English characterizations. More dramatic
in its plot is Adam Bede, which tells the story of a girl who had an
illegitimate child which she destroyed. The Mill on the Floss begins
by realistically describing the everyday life of two children, a boy
and a girl, and many will find the first half of the book very dull and
commonplace. The last half is dramatic enough, however, to make up
for the dullness of the first part. Daniel Deronda is considered less
successful, though Silas Marner is a classic. It is a shorter story,
of a certain phase of English country life. These are practically all
of George Eliot’s works, the two or three other books being hardly
fascinating enough to hold the modern reader.
To many Jane Austen is greater even than George Eliot. She wrote in the
early part of the century, even before the appearance of the Waverley
novels; but her stories are read as much to-day as they ever were.
They are fine and exceedingly true portrayals of the uneventful but
interesting heart life of a number of different young women in English
country villages. Some consider Emma her greatest story; but it is
less interesting than Sense and Sensibility (a study of two girls, one
representing sense and the other sensibility) and Pride and Prejudice
(the story of the marrying off of five daughters, one of whom is
especially interesting and is the heroine). Jane Austen is notable in
that she has a lively though quiet sense of humour that runs through
all her work.
Another charming, simple, and rather amusing study of English village
life is Mrs. Gaskell’s Cranford, a book well worth reading if one is
interested in the unheroic struggles and devotions of women.
Of modern writers in this style, Mary Wilkins is probably the best, her
short stories being superior to her novels.
There are two women’s novels entirely different from any that had gone
before or that have come after. They are Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.
The lives of these girls was sad and unfortunate. They belonged to a
respectable family, and throughout maintained their respectability
shut in by conventionality and suffering from poverty. Jane Eyre is
a girl whose mind and not her face was her fortune. The story is in
reality the autobiography of the inner tempestuous life of Charlotte
Bronte herself. Jane is governess in the family of an eccentric man
named Rochester, who was at one time the hero of half the women of
England. He loved Jane and asked her to marry him, but at the altar it
is discovered that he has a wife living, whom he had looked on as dead
because she was insane. So the lovers are parted to be united only in a
tragedy.
Wuthering Heights is a story of love and revenge within the
conventionalities of English higher-class life, and extends over two
generations. As a study of love and the far-reaching effects of its
disappointment, it is a powerful though gloomy story, and by no means
so finely artistic as Jane Eyre.
Another woman’s work in a class by itself is Harriet Beecher Stowe’s
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which to this day is found in the list of half dozen
best selling books, equaling the sales of the latest current novel.
It is a wonderfully humorous, pathetic, and sympathetic picture of
Southern life before the war, and probably as exact as most historical
fiction, though many Southerners violently resent its claim to
truthfulness.